Reiko Hiroshima, Curry Barker, the first a Japanese writer whose Fushigi Dagishaya Zenitendo is a book series published since 2013, adapted to manga and anime, and the second, an American YouTube content creator whose first feature film Obsession is one of two American films (1) rewriting Summer movie rules at this particular moment in film history. Tellingly, this is happening when the power of studios, having undergone a 21st century existential trauma with the emergence of streaming, is now experiencing the full assault of acquisition and merger politics. By comparison, Amazon’s purchase of MGM appears almost civil. Obsession might almost feel like an act of resistance, were it for the fact that it blossomed in the fields of Google.
I spend time there as well, I subscribe to various YouTube channels. I used to watch the Criterion Closet when filmmakers and actors with a connection to cinema came in to select titles. Some entered with expected choices, others more surprising, and there were those who spoke articulately, movingly about specific films. I remember the modesty of Cilian Murphy asking if he could take the Wes Anderson box set. But more recently, I am either clueless as to who the guest is, or unable to watch through because how many times can the same Albert Brooks (whom I often confuse with Charles Grodin) title be their go-to movie. Possibly more the point, a new cinephilea is being recorded here by 21st century media figures who pick a Coen Brothers film and one of the few contemporary comedies released on Criterion, usually Amy Heckerling’s (1982…) Fast Times at Ridgemont High with 22-year old Sean Penn. This when Obsession is up against a Jon Favreau film and the attempt, as pleasant as he might be, to make him an auteur because like Lucas he knows Kurosawa films. I bring this up as a possible archival strategy, the one built in small spaces as opposed to warehouses, the closet at Criterion, the bedrooms with background neons and Shure microphones of YouTube movie reviewers. Nothing similar ever took place in Japan for cinema, where Tokyo, once one of the truly great cities showing international films all year round, glided easily at the turn of the century towards film amnesia rather than immemory, starting with its own breathtaking film history.
Which brings me back to Barker’s Obsession. A clever, well acted, well framed film. It is neither Magnificent nor even Odd, nor does it have Geneviève Bujold. For those overwhelmingly familiar with modern American horror cinema, or even US tv dramas/sitcoms/romcoms, Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarrette) appears intensely collegiate and a being of social media. Michael Douglas did not need to wish for that version of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction; she was fully formed, as was Jessica Walter in Play Misty for Me. The becoming of Nikki Freeman can be a signpost for the YouTube changing Hollywood narrative. I mentioned the Obsession plot to my wife who observed that this was close to what happens in Zenitendō, in which a shopkeeper offers candy suited to help those who go there with problems; the candy, depending if it’s used correctly, will either bring joy or trouble. How difficult the story would have been for the Bear character if the wish came as a vaccine.
1- Backrooms, by Kane Parsons.
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